In an “Urgent Report” addressed to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, an FBI official says that an unidentified individual has “observed numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees conducted in… Iraq.” According to the FBI official, the informant said that the abuses included “strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations.” The FBI official also says that the informant provided the name of a person involved in covering up these abuses. The report is later released to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in a heavily redacted state, with several paragraphs blanked out. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 6/25/2004 ]

In a two-page “info memo,” Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), reports to Stephen A. Cambone, under secretary of Defense for Intelligence, an incident involving abuse in Iraq that happened after the Abu Ghraib photographs were publicly revealed. The day before, Jacoby received a report from two members of his agency, describing mistreatment of detainees by Task Force (TF) 6-26, the successor to TF-121, and composed of members of Special Forces units. Earlier that month, two members of the DIA observed that prisoners were brought into the “Temporary Detention Facility in Baghdad” who had burn marks on their backs and bruises and complained of pain in their kidneys. One of the DIA officials then witnessed an interrogator from TF-6-26 “punch a prisoner in the face to the point the individual needed medical attention.” When this intelligence official subsequently took pictures of the victim, the photos were confiscated. When the two intelligence personnel objected to the treatment, they were threatened and told to keep quiet. The keys to their vehicles were confiscated and they were instructed “not to leave the compound without specific permission, even to get a haircut.” They were told their e-mail messages would be screened. Their witnessing had apparently been a mistake on the part of the Special Forces soldiers. The two witnesses nevertheless persevered in reporting the incident to their superiors and their account found its way to Adm. Jacoby. [New York Times, 12/8/2004; Washington Post, 12/8/2004] The Pentagon will report on December 8, 2004 that four members of the Task Force were disciplined in connection with this incident and reassigned to other duties. [Guardian, 12/9/2004]

On the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, President Bush says: “America stands against and will not tolerate torture. We will investigate and prosecute all acts of torture… in all territory under our jurisdiction.… Torture is wrong no matter where it occurs, and the United States will continue to lead the fight to eliminate it everywhere.”
[US President, 7/5/2004]

The Washington Post quotes a former senior official from the Justice Department saying interrogators were allowed to deceive detainees into thinking they would be seriously harmed. “Clearly, that is not considered torture. It might be unpleasant and it might offend our sensibilities in most situations, but in these situations they were necessary and productive.” In deference to his own profession, he adds: “We never had a situation where we said, ‘You can do anything you want to.’ We never, ever did that. We were aggressive, but our people were very scholarly and lawyerlike.”
[Washington Post, 6/27/2004]

After the handover of official sovereignty of Iraq to an interim Iraqi government, US forces continue to be responsible for operating two prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib. [Independent, 6/10/2004]

David Hicks. [Source: Associated Press]In the case of Rasul v. Bush, involving Guantanamo detainees Shafiq Rasul, Mamdouh Habib, David Hicks, and Asif Iqbal, the Supreme Court holds in a 6-3 ruling that the US exercises “complete jurisdiction and control” over Guantanamo Bay, and thus, that the Guantanamo prisoners have the right to challenge their detentions before a judge. Under the habeas corpus statute, Justice John Paul Stevens writes for the majority that “aliens held at the base, no less than American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts’ authority.” [Supreme Court opinion on writ of certiorari. Shafiq Rasul, et al. v. George W. Bush, et al., 6/28/2004] It is unclear whether the court’s ruling is intended to extend to detainees held in other parts of the world, but given the court’s reasoning, it appears that decision applies to detainees both in Guantanamo and elsewhere. [New York Times, 6/29/2004]Conservative Dissent - The three dissenting justices are conservatives William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Scalia says the decision is “an irresponsible overturning of settled law in a matter of extreme importance to our forces currently in the field.” He acknowledges that the location of Guantanamo has in fact been intended to keep detainees outside of the reach of the judiciary. “Today, the court springs a trap on the executive, subjecting Guantanamo Bay to the oversight of federal courts even though it has never before been thought to be within their jurisdiction, and thus making it a foolish place to have housed alien wartime detainees,” Scalia writes. Stevens writes that it does not matter what status the Guantanamo inmates have regarding the question of whether they should have access to a US court. “What is presently at stake is only whether the federal courts have jurisdiction to determine the legality of the executive’s potentially indefinite detention of individuals who claim to be wholly innocent of wrongdoing.” And this, he writes, they do. The case is subsequently sent back to a lower court to consider the prisoners’ claims. [Guardian, 6/28/2004]Side-Stepping the Ruling - The media characterizes the decision as a rebuke for the Bush administration, which had argued that the courts have no right to interfere in the commander in chief’s decisions involving wartime policies. However, the decision says nothing about what rights the detainees might have once they get inside a courtroom, and therefore actually places little real restraint on the government. White House officials will decide that the detainees have no rights in the courtroom whatsoever—although the Court has ruled that they can file lawsuits, those lawsuits must be dismissed out of hand because the detainees have no right to actually present a case. The Republican-led Congress will later pass a law stripping courts of jurisdiction over Guantanamo lawsuits. [Savage, 2007, pp. 192]

In the case of Jose Padilla v. Donald Rumsfeld (see June 9, 2002), the Supreme Court votes 5-4 in favor of the government, declining to rule on the basis of a technicality. The majority argues that Padilla’s petition was incorrectly filed in New York rather than in South Carolina, where he is currently held. While Padilla was held in New York in preparation for an appearance before a grand jury, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld designated him an enemy combatant. Padilla was thereupon transferred to military custody and sent to a naval brig in South Carolina to be detained indefinitely. His lawyer meanwhile, unaware of her client’s transfer, filed a habeas corpus petition in New York against Rumsfeld (see June 11, 2002). This was erroneous, says the majority, which rules that Padilla has to re-file his petition in South Carolina. Four dissenting judges condemn the “secret transfer” of Padilla. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the minority, declares, “At stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a free society.” Stevens also condemns the use of “incommunicado detention for months on end” as a means “to extract information” and places it among the “tools of tyrants.” [Supreme Court opinion on writ of certiorari. Shafiq Rasul, et al. v. George W. Bush, et al., 6/28/2004] Therefore, in essence, the majority declines to rule on the merits of the case. [Savage, 2007, pp. 193]

Yaser Esam Hamdi. [Source: Associated Press]In the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi v. Donald Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court rules 8-1 that, contrary to the government’s position, Hamdi (see December 2001), as a US citizen held inside the US, cannot be held indefinitely and incommunicado without an opportunity to challenge his detention. It rules he has the right to be given the opportunity to challenge the basis for his detention before an impartial court. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor writes for the majority: “It would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court with a challenge to the factual basis for his detention by his government, simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge. Absent suspension of the writ by Congress, a citizen detained as an enemy combatant is entitled to this process.” Hamdi, on the other hand, apart from military interrogations and “screening processes,” has received no process. Due process, according to a majority of the Court, “demands some system for a citizen detainee to refute his classification [as enemy combatant].” A “citizen-detainee… must receive notice of the factual basis for his classification, and a fair opportunity to rebut the government’s factual assertions before a neutral decision-maker.” However, O’Connor writes, “an interrogation by one’s captor… hardly constitutes a constitutionally adequate factfinding before a neutral decisionmaker.” Conservative Dissent: President Has Inherent Power to Detain Citizens during War - Only Justice Clarence Thomas affirms the government’s opinion, writing, “This detention falls squarely within the federal government’s war powers, and we lack the expertise and capacity to second-guess that decision.” [Supreme Court opinion on writ of certiorari. Shafiq Rasul, et al. v. George W. Bush, et al., 6/28/2004] Thomas adds: “The Founders intended that the president have primary responsibility—along with the necessary power—to protect the national security and to conduct the nation’s foreign relations. They did so principally because the structural advantages of a unitary executive are essential in these domains.” [Dean, 2007, pp. 105]'A State of War Is Not a Blank Check for the President' - The authority to hold Hamdi and other such US citizens captured on enemy battlefields derives from Congress’s Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF—see September 14-18, 2001). Justice Antonin Scalia dissents from this portion of the majority ruling, saying that because Congress had not suspended habeas corpus, Hamdi should either be charged with a crime or released. The Court also finds that if Hamdi was indeed a missionary and not a terrorist, as both he and his father claim, then he must be freed. While the Court does not grant Hamdi the right to a full criminal trial, it grants him the right to a hearing before a “neutral decision-maker” to challenge his detention. O’Connor writes: “It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our nation’s commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in these times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad.… We have long made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.” Affirms President's Right to Hold US Citizens Indefinitely - Although the media presents the ruling as an unmitigated defeat for the Bush administration, it is actually far more mixed. The White House is fairly pleased with the decision, insamuch as Hamdi still has no access to civilian courts; the administration decides that Hamdi’s “neutral decision-maker” will be a panel of military officers. Hamdi will not have a lawyer, nor will he have the right to see the evidence against him if it is classified. This is enough to satisfy the Court’s ruling, the White House decides. In 2007, author and reporter Charlie Savage will write: “[T]he administration’s legal team noted with quiet satisfaction that, so long as some kind of minimal hearing was involved, the Supreme Court had just signed off on giving presidents the wartime power to hold a US citizen without charges or a trial—forever.” The Justice Department says of the ruling that it is “pleased that the [Court] today upheld the authority of the president as commander in chief of the armed forces to detain enemy combatants, including US citizens.… This power, which was contested by lawyers representing individuals captured in the War on Terror, is one of the most essential authorities the US Constitution grants the president to defend America from our enemies.” [Savage, 2007, pp. 193-194]

Scott Horton. [Source: HBO]Scott Horton of the New York City Bar Association says that investigations by the Pentagon “have a reputation for tending to whitewash, but even taking this into account, the current investigations seem to be setting new standards.” He adds: “Rumsfeld has completely rigged the investigations. My friends say we should expect something much akin to the army inspector general’s report—
‘just a few rotten apples.’” [Guardian, 9/13/2004]

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly pressures the Army to conclude the investigations (see August 25, 2004) of Generals George Fay and Anthony R. Jones by late August, before the Republican Convention in New York. [Guardian, 9/13/2004Sources:Scott Horton]

Army Brig. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr. files his 21-page classified report on his investigation of detention operations in Afghanistan. According to three unnamed officials later interviewed by the Washington Post, Jacoby finds that US detention facilities in Afghanistan are plagued with many of the same problems present in Iraq. He also finds that rectal examinations are being used unnecessarily to search for contraband, while magnetic wands should be used instead. He reports also that only half of the some two dozen US prisons in Afghanistan have written guidelines posted that list approved interrogation practices. [Washington Post, 12/3/2004] But Lt. Col. Pamela Keeton, spokeswoman for the US military in Afghanistan, will later claim Jacoby “found no evidence of abuse taking place… nor… any evidence of leaders authorizing or condoning abuse.”
[BBC, 12/13/2004]

A CD is found during a routine clean-up of the office of a captain at Bagram. The CD contains half a dozen photographs showing uniformed but masked US soldiers pointing their M-4 rifles and 9-mm guns at the heads of handcuffed and hooded or blindfolded detainees. In one photo, a detainee has his head pushed against the wall of a cage. The shots were apparently taken in and around a US base in southern Afghanistan near the village of Deh Rawod, called Fire Base Tycze, between December 2003 and February 2004. The unit responsible for the photographs is the 2nd platoon of the 22nd Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, NY. Soldiers of this unit admit to Army investigators that similar photos were purposely destroyed after the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted. A specialist explains in a report dated July 8, 2004, “After seeing the problems they had in Iraq, I knew this was a problem and should have never been done. I realized there would be another public outrage if these photographs got out, so they were destroyed. I knew it was wrong after I [saw] the reports in the newspaper on the prison abuse scandal in Iraq.” The destruction is an apparently unit-wide effort. A staff sergeant tells a specialist to “get rid of the pictures” and a specialist says he “verbally counseled” a soldier to “get rid of” his photographs. Another says, “I realize it makes me and my unit look bad, and in no way meant for this to happen.” The destroyed pictures allegedly depicted detainees being kicked and beaten. [US Department of Army, 7/8/2004 ; US Department of Army, 8/2/2004 ; US Department of Army, 8/5/2004 ; US Department of Army, 8/25/2004 ; US Department of the Army, 10/11/2004 ; Los Angeles Times, 2/18/2005]

Four days after the Supreme Court decision (see June 28, 2004), lawyers representing nine Guantanamo prisoners file five lawsuits in the US District Court in Washington D.C., arguing that their detentions are unlawful and unconstitutional, and seeking their release. [Reuters, 7/2/2004]

British Member of Parliament Tom Brake questions whether detainees are being kept at “Camp Justice” on the island of Diego Garcia and calls for reassurances that the base is not being used “to secretly hold and interrogate terror suspects.”
[BBC, 7/7/2004]

In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling a week before (see June 28, 2004), Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz signs an Order Establishing a Combatant Status Review Tribunal thereby establishing “Combatant Status Review Tribunals” to review each Guantanamo detainee and decide whether the prisoner is an unlawful enemy combatant. [US Department of Defense, 7/7/2004 ] The tribunals will use the following definition of an unlawful combatant: “Any individual who was part of supporting Taliban or al-Qaeda forces or was associated with forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. This includes any person who has committed belligerent acts or directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces.”
[New York Times, 8/24/2004]

Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora writes a secret, but unclassified, memo to Vice Admiral Albert Church, who led a Pentagon investigation into abuses at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Mora writes the memo in an attempt to stop what he sees as a disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruel and inhuman treatment of terror suspects. The memo details in chronological fashion Mora’s earlier attempts to speak out against the Bush administration’s decision to circumvent the Geneva Conventions (see January 9, 2002 and January 11, 2002). Specific Problems - Mora, a veteran of the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and a strong supporter of the “war on terror,” argues that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward US-held terrorist suspects is an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also writes that the Bush administration’s legal arguments that justify an expansion of executive power in everything from interrogations to warrantless wiretapping are “unlawful,” “dangerous,” and “erroneous” legal theories. Not only are they wrong in granting President Bush the right to authorize torture, he warns that they may leave US personnel open to criminal prosecution. While the administration has argued that it holds to humane, legal standards in interrogation practices (see January 12, 2006), Mora’s memo shows that from the outset of the administration’s “war on terror,” the White House, the Justice Department, and the Defense Department intentionally skirted and at times ignored domestic and international laws surrounding interrogation and detention of prisoners. Cruelty and Torture - Mora will later recall the mood in the Pentagon: “The mentality was that we lost three thousand Americans [on 9/11], and we could lose a lot more unless something was done. It was believed that some of the Guantanamo detainees had knowledge of other 9/11-like operations that were under way, or would be executed in the future. The gloves had to come off. The US had to get tougher.” But, Mora will say, the authorization of cruel treatment of detainees is as pernicious as any defined torture techniques that have been used. “To my mind, there’s no moral or practical distinction,” he says. “If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America—even those designated as ‘unlawful enemy combatants.’ If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles. It’s a transformative issue.… The debate here isn’t only how to protect the country. It’s how to protect our values.” [Mora, 7/7/2004 ; New Yorker, 2/27/2006]

Mehdi Ghezali, held at Guantanamo since December 2001, returns to Sweden. He has lost feeling in part of his left foot because of the ankle chains he wore at Guantanamo. His teeth are also in poor condition. [Agence France-Presse, 7/14/2004]

In an e-mail announcing a “special inquiry,” Steve McCraw, the assistant director of the FBI’s Office for Intelligence, asks more than 500 FBI agents who have been stationed at Guantanamo to report whether they have observed “aggressive treatment, interrogations, or interview techniques” that violate FBI guidelines. Twenty-six of the 478 responding agents report having witnessed mistreatment by personnel of other US agencies. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni later determines 17 of these 26 pertain to “approved DOD techniques.” The others are marked for further investigation. [American Civil Liberties Union, 1/5/2005]

British detainee Moazzam Begg, being held in Guantanamo, manages to send a handwritten four-page letter uncensored by US authorities. Begg’s lawyers in Britain describe this as an “oddity.” His solicitor Stafford Smith says the letter must have been released either “by mistake or because someone in the US has a conscience.” In the letter, Begg describes having been subjected to “pernicious threats of torture, actual vindictive torture, and death threats, amongst other coercively employed interrogation techniques.” This happened “particularly, though unexclusively in Afghanistan.” Interviews, Begg writes, “were conducted in an environment of generated fear, resonant with terrifying screams of fellow detainees facing similar methods. In this atmosphere of severe antipathy towards detainees was the compounded use of racially and religiously prejudiced taunts. This culminated, in my opinion, with the deaths of two fellow detainees (see November 30-December 3, 2002)
(see December 10, 2002) at the hands of US military personnel, to which I myself was partially witness.” [Guardian, 10/1/2004]

Spanish detainee Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, 29, is released on bail [BBC, 10/4/2004] after four and a half months in a Spanish prison. Prior to his time in the Spanish prison, he had spent two years at Guantanamo. Two days later, he will report that he was beaten and psychologically tortured during his detainment at the facility. [Muslim Civil Rights Center, 7/2004]

The FBI’s Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, Thomas J. Harrington, informs Maj. Gen. Donald J. Ryder, the Army’s Provost Marshal General, of incidents of abuse that a team of FBI investigators under his command witnessed at Guantanamo at the end of 2002 (see End of 2002). Harrington urges Ryder to take “appropriate action.”
[Financial Times, 12/7/2004]

The Deputy Staff Judge Advocate for US Central Command (CENTCOM) says that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of torture methods against detainees in US custody (see December 2, 2002) rendered such methods legal for use in Afghanistan. According to the lawyer: “[T]he methodologies approved for [Guantanamo]… would appear to me to be legal interrogation processes. [The secretary of defense] had approved them. The general counsel [Pentagon counsel William J. Haynes] had approved them.… I believe it is fair to say the procedures approved for Guantanamo were legal for Afghanistan.” [Huffington Post, 4/21/2009]

After months of ignoring requests from the Senate Armed Services Committee for Red Cross reports on detention operations at US-run prisons in Iraq, [New York Times, 7/24/2004] the Pentagon finally delivers 24 of the organization’s 25 reports.
[New York Times, 7/16/2004] But the reports are shown only briefly to senators and a few members of the Armed Services Committee staff before being taken back to the Pentagon. [New York Times, 7/16/2004]

Commentaries

“The authors of this 300-page whitewash say they found no ‘systemic’ problem—even though there were 94 documented cases of prisoner abuse, including some 40 deaths, 20 of them homicides; even though only four prisons of the 16 they visited had copies of the Geneva conventions; even though Abu Ghraib was a cesspool with one shower for every 50 inmates; even though the military police were improperly involved in interrogations; even though young people plucked from civilian life were sent to guard prisoners—50,000 of them in all—with no training.”
— July 24, 2004 [New York Times, 7/24/2004]

“… the Pentagon brought those reports to the Senate in the last two weeks, in a way that ensured they would be given the least attention and have the least effect.”
— July 24, 2004 [New York Times, 7/24/2004]

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), says that there is proof that Iraqi prisoners, including women and children, were raped and sodomized by US guards while in custody at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. Hersh, who, as evidenced by a video recording of the speech, is struggling with what to say and what not to say, tells the assemblage: “Debating about it, ummm.… Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib.… The women were passing messages out saying, ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened,’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.” Hersh continues: “It’s impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai [a US military atrocity during the Vietnam War] I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers, and so we’re dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will.” In an earlier speech, Hersh noted the photos and videos of “horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.” [Salon, 7/15/2004] Other stories from Abu Ghraib document the rape and sexual assault of prisoners (see October 7, 2003, October 24, 2003, and January 4, 2004).

Huda al-Azzawi is the last female detainee to be released from the Hard Site at Abu Ghraib. She is flown by a helicopter to Al Taji, a US military base north of Baghdad.“After eight months in prison they suddenly treated me like a queen,” she later recalls. “It was weird. They offered me some Pepsi. I could take a shower. There was air conditioning. There were four female soldiers to look after me. The doctor came to see me four times in 24 hours. They made me sign a piece of paper promising not to leave the country. And then I was free.” [Guardian, 9/20/2004] Her release is reportedly due to intervention by Sheik Hicham al-Duleimi. During her stay in prison, her husband had filed for divorce. After her release, she became the Sheik’s nineteenth wife. “I would have liked,” she said looking back, “at the moment I was leaving my cell, to have had a profound thought or to have pronounced a meaningful sentence. I was the last woman in the prison! But my head was empty. Bizarrely, the only words that came to my mind were English: ‘Bye-bye.’ But, I believe I have still not completely left Abu Ghraib.” [Le Monde (Paris), 10/12/2004] Asked what she thinks of Americans now, after the terrible ordeal of her and her family, she answers, “I hate them.” [Guardian, 9/20/2004]

Paul T. Mikolashek. [Source: US Army]The US Army’s inspector general, Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, presents a 300-page report listing 94 documented cases of prisoner abuse to the Senate Armed Services Committee. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] Of the 94 cases cited in the report, 39 are deaths. Twenty of those are suspected homicides. [Los Angeles Times, 10/15/2004] In preparing the report, Mikolashek’s team visited more than two dozen US military installations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US. Unlike previous investigations, Mikolashek did not look at individual cases. Instead, his team reviewed records of reported cases and the findings of previous investigations. Team members also interviewed 650 soldiers and officers and looked at broad Army doctrine and training. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] Mikolashek’s report concludes that abuses were not due to “systemic” problems. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] For example, it found no evidence that there was a “pattern of abuse” in the central command’s area of responsibility. [New York Times, 6/6/2004] The report’s conclusions are made in spite of the fact that the investigative team identified numerous problems at the prison stemming from poorly trained US military personnel, inadequate supervision, and vague and contradictory policies and orders. According to Mikolashek, documented cases of abuse were “aberrations” that did not follow from Army doctrine but from the “the failure of individuals to follow known standards of discipline and Army values and, in some cases, the failure of a few leaders to enforce those standards of discipline.” They were, the report stressed, “unauthorized actions taken by a few individuals.” The conduct of most of the soldiers, however, exhibited “military professionalism, ingrained Army values, and moral courage,” the report insisted. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] The report’s conclusions stand in stark contrast to the Red Cross’s report (see February 24, 2004), released in late February, which concluded that problems in the US detention system were widespread and systemic. Though the report will be heavily criticized for its conclusion that military and administration officials should not be blamed for the atrocities, it does contain an abundant amount of evidence that they created an environment that encouraged the abuses to happen. For example, Mikolashek’s team found: The military hired private contractors to interrogate detainees because the military had too few translators and interrogators in the field. More than a third of these private contractors were not sufficiently trained. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] Almost two thirds of the prisoners were kept in makeshift prison camps, or collection points, for as many as 30 days—60 times the 12-hour limit set by Army doctrine. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] Preventive medical services were insufficient. Not one of the US-run facilities visited by the team met the Army’s medical screening requirements. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] Copies of the Geneva Conventions in the detainees’ native languages were present at only four of the 16 facilities visited by Mikolashek’s team, in contravention of international law. There was not a single US-run facility in Afghanistan that had a copy. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] At Abu Ghraib, the conditions were extremely unsanitary. The prison was seriously overcrowded, lacked an adequate supply of potable water, and had garbage and sewage strewn on the grounds of the outdoor camps. There were only 12 showers available for 600 to 700 detainees. Meals provided to the detainees were often contaminated with dirt and rodent droppings. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] The Bagram base in Afghanistan had a leaking roof and no sanitary system. “Human waste spills were frequent on the main floor,” the reports says. Sections of the base were contaminated with toxic chemicals leftover from previous airport operations. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004] The military’s interrogation policy was confusing and instructions were often conflicting. “While the language of the approved policies could be viewed as a careful attempt to draw the line between lawful and unlawful conduct, the published instructions left considerable room for misapplication.” This could “create settings in which unsanctioned behavior, including detainee abuse, could occur,” the report’s authors conclude. [Washington Post, 7/23/2004]

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. [Source: FBI]Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a high-level al-Qaeda operative from Tanzania suspected of participating in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa, is captured in Gujrat, Pakistan, after a violent standoff with Pakistani police. [CNN, 8/3/2004] Ghailani’s arrest is publicly announced on July 29, four days later. The announcement by Pakistan’s Interior Minister Faisal Hayat is made in an unusual late-night press conference that takes place just hours before John Kerry accepts the Democratic nomination for president. [Salon, 8/17/2004] Pakistani authorities say the announcement of Ghailani’s arrest was delayed four days because of the need to confirm his identity before making the proclamation. [BBC, 7/30/2004] But former Pakistani official Husain Haqqani later claims the announcement was timed to upstage the Kerry speech. [Salon, 8/17/2004; United States Conference on International Religious Freedom, 6/30/2005] An article in the New Republic published earlier in the month reported that the Bush administration was asking Pakistan to make high-profile arrests of al-Qaeda suspects during the Democratic National Convention in order to redirect US media attention from the nomination of John Kerry (see July 8, 2004). [New Republic, 7/29/2004] John Judis, who co-wrote the article predicting such an arrest, says the day after the arrest is announced, “Well, the latest development pretty much confirms what we wrote in the article, which is that there was pressure for Pakistan to produce a high-value target during the last 10 days of July and to announce that arrest.” He also asks why is it “they announced [the arrest] at all? Because when you have somebody who’s been in hiding since 1998, they have an enormous amount of information and contacts. By announcing this guy’s arrest, what you do is you warn off everybody who’s been associated with him from the last five or six years. You tell them that they better get their act together or they are going to be found. So, there’s some, really a lot of questions of why they announced this thing when they did.… It may be in this case that we—that we, and the Pakistanis got somebody and prematurely announced this person’s arrest in order to have an electoral impact.” [Democracy Now!, 7/30/2004]

Former detainees Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, and Rhuhel Ahmed release a “composite statement” describing in detail their experiences as detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. [Rasul, Iqbal, and Ahmed, 7/26/2004 ] Mark Jacobson, a former Defense Department official who worked on detainee issues in the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as part of the Detainee Policy Group, will call the report “a wonderful piece of propaganda” that mixes some truth with lies and misinterpretations. [Boston Globe, 8/5/2004]

Four French nationals, detained at Guantanamo, are transferred to the French government. They had never been charged with any crime. [US Department of Defense, 7/27/2004] They are Mourad Benchellali, Nizar Sassi, Imad Kanouni, and Brahim Yadel. [BBC, 10/4/2004] Apart from these French detainees, 18 have been transferred to the control of their governments: seven to Russia, four to Saudi Arabia, one to Spain, one to Sweden, and five to Britian. A total of 129 detainees have been released. [US Department of Defense, 7/27/2004]

The mobile trailer where Combatant Status Review Tribunals are held. [Source: US Navy]At Guantanamo, the first of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (see July 7, 2004) convenes to determine whether the designations of 585 detainees at Guantanamo as unlawful enemy combatants are just. The hearings were ordered by the Supreme Court which ruled in June that detainees have the right to challenge their detention (see June 28, 2004). The hearings, open to only a small number of reporters, are conducted by three military officers. Each hearing will generally take about two hours. The defendants are not required to cooperate or even be present during the hearings. [New York Times, 8/24/2004] The burden of proof during the tribunal hearings lies with the detainees, although they are hardly in a position to make their case. They are not permitted attorneys to represent their case. Instead, each detainee is assigned a “personal representative,” who is a military officer, not a lawyer or advocate. The detainees can be denied information about how, where, and from whom incriminating information about them originates. [New York Times, 8/24/2004] Although the detainees may call witnesses or present evidence, the Los Angeles Times reports that they are rarely permitted to put forward any evidence or offer the testimony of witnesses in their defense. According to the newspaper, their requests are frequently turned down as “irrelevant.” Other evidence is often ruled inadmissible. [Los Angeles Times, 11/7/2004] Government prosecutors, however, are permitted to use a wider range of types of evidence than that which is permissible in a US criminal court. According to the order establishing the tribunals: “The Tribunal is not bound by the rules of evidence such as would apply in a court of law. Instead the Tribunal shall be free to consider any information it deems relevant and helpful to a resolution of the issue before it. At the discretion of the Tribunal, for example, it may consider hearsay evidence, taking into account the reliability of such evidence in the circumstances.” [US Department of Defense, 7/7/2004 ]

During the six-month period the Combatant Status Review Tribunals are held at Guantanamo, the military severely restricts reporters’ access to the hearings. Reporters are not permitted free access to the hearing rooms and are denied basic information about the detainees, such as their names and the charges being made against them. “As a result, the hearings have received almost no news coverage,” the Los Angeles Times will report in November.
[Los Angeles Times, 11/7/2004]

An unnamed Defense Department official tells the Washington Post that the soon-to-be-released Fay report (see August 25, 2004), authored by Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones and Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, will demonstrate that the prisoner abuses “were bad, illegal, unauthorized, and some of it was sadistic.” But the report will conclude that they were “the actions of a few; actions that went unnoticed because of leadership failures.”
[Washington Post, 8/24/2004]

An unnamed Army officer, interviewed by the Washington Post, says that an incident involving two MP dog handlers who were competing to be the first to make juvenile detainees urinate on themselves had “nothing to do with interrogation.” Rather, “It was just them on their own being weird,” he contends. [Washington Post, 8/24/2004]

Portions of the Fay report (see August 25, 2004) are leaked to the Baltimore Sun. It is quickly characterized as a deliberate cover-up to protect senior military and civilian officials. [Sunday Telegraph, 8/15/2004]

A lawyer, who has been in regular communication with military officials about the problem of prisoner abuse, tells the Telegraph of London that the soon-to-be-released Fay report (see August 25, 2004) is a whitewash: “This is a whitewash—a carefully orchestrated one. People in the Pentagon have been coming to me in a fury because of the way this has been handled. By naming military intelligence officials as well as the seven military police who have been charged, it will look like action has been taken. But basically it’s still the same storyline of just a few bad apples, way down the food chain.”
[Sunday Telegraph, 8/15/2004]

An artist’s drawing of Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi appearing before a military commission on August 27, 2004. [Source: Art Lien/ Getty Images]The number of Guantanamo detainees charged with a crime and singled out for trial by military commission reaches 15. However, for the time being, hearings are scheduled for only four of them—David Hicks, Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al-Bahlul, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, and Salim Ahmed Hamdan. All are charged with conspiracy, except for Australian David Hicks, who is also charged with attempted murder and aiding the enemy. [New York Times, 8/25/2004]

Referring to the forthcoming Fay report (see August 25, 2004), an unnamed Pentagon adviser tells the Telegraph of London: “Some of the military lawyers are incandescent. There’s been a deliberate attempt to make sure the buck stops well before it gets to the doors of the civilian hierarchy.”
[Sunday Telegraph, 8/15/2004]

A Guantanamo detainee from Yemen, Yasin Qasem Muhammad Ismail, says during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing, that “whenever we spoke to the interrogators we were punished.”
[Los Angeles Times, 11/7/2004]

Officials at the CIA refer a case in which a detainee named Gul Rahman apparently froze to death at the Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan (see November 20, 2002) to the Justice Department for examination. [Washington Post, 9/19/2009] The full name of the CIA officer who caused the detainee to die is not known, although his last name is Zirbel. [Mahoney and Johnson, 10/9/2009, pp. 29 ] The case is reviewed with an eye to prosecution by the US Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, where one of the office’s top prosecutors works on it. [Washington Post, 9/19/2009] This is apparently one of eight such referrals around this time. [New York Times, 10/23/2005] According to the New York Times, the Justice Department will be “reviewing its jurisdiction” in the case in May 2005. [New York Times, 5/22/2004] The department will decide not to prosecute in October 2005 (see Mid-October 2005), but will re-examine the case in 2009 (see August 24, 2009).

Sherman Carroll, spokesman for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, says that he believes the claims (see July 26, 2004) made by the “Tipton Three”about having been abused in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo are true. He says, “If [the detainees] had used the word torture, I would agree with that. This is more than ‘torture-lite’ [stress and duress techniques]. Guantanamo Bay should be closed down.”
[Guardian, 8/5/2004]

In response to allegations (see July 26, 2004) made by the “Tipton Three”, Florian Westphal, spokesman of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), says: “Some of the abuses alleged by the detainees would indeed constitute inhuman treatment.… Inhuman treatment constitutes a grave breach of the Third Geneva Convention and these are often also described as war crimes.”
[Guardian, 8/5/2004]

The Department of Defense reports it has transferred five Moroccan detainees from Guantanamo to the government of Morocco. This makes the total number of detainees being held at Guantanamo 585. [US Department of Defense, 8/2/2004]

More than 300 members of the American Bar Association, including former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and former FBI Director William S. Sessions, sign a statement condemning the “torture memos.” These memos, they write, “ignore and misinterpret the US Constitution and laws, international treaties, and rules of international law.” The statement further denounces the lawyers who wrote them, saying they “have sought to justify actions that violate the most basic rights of all human beings.”
[Cox News Service, 8/5/2004; Truthout (.org), 8/29/2004] They tried to “circumvent long established and universally acknowledged principles of law and common decency,” the lawyers charge.
[Washington Post, 8/5/2004]

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski tells the BBC: “I have been told there’s a reliable witness who’s made a statement… indicating that not only was I not included in any of the meetings discussing interrogation operations, but specific measures were taken to ensure I would not have access to those facilities, that information or any of the details of interrogations at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else.” Who that witness was, she does not reveal. When asked if she thinks there is a conspiracy at a senior level to keep her in the dark, she answers: “Correct. From what I understand… it was people that had full knowledge of what was going on out at Abu Ghraib who knew that they had to keep Janis Karpinski from discovering any of those activities.” When she is asked whether she believes the conspiracy reaches up to the Pentagon or the White House, she responds: “The indication is that it may have.”
[Associated Press, 8/4/2004]

The American Bar Association warns that the “widespread pattern of abusive detention methods” have helped to “feed terrorism by painting the United States as an arrogant nation above the law.”
[Associated Press, 8/9/2004]

After an oral argument in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein orders the Pentagon and other government agencies to comply with the Freedom of Information Act and provide the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups documents about detention and interrogation activities regarding prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. The government must comply by August 23, the court orders. [Reuters, 8/12/2004]

The UN’s independent expert on human rights in Afghanistan, Cherif Bassiouni, visits the Afghan government’s Pul-i-Charkhi prison in Kabul where 725 Taliban members and Pakistani supporters are being held. After his visit, he describes conditions at the prison as “inhuman” and says that the prisoners should be released. He also wanted to visit the US-run detention centers in Afghanistan but US authorities rejected his request. Bassiouni says the US’s lack of transparency “raises serious concerns about the legality of detention and conditions of those detainees.”
[Reuters, 8/22/2004]

Writing in the medical journal, The Lancet, bioethicist Steven Miles calls for an investigation into the role doctors and nurses played in abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. He cites evidence that doctors or medics covered up the abuse by falsifying death certificates and even helped develop the military’s interrogation policy. “The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations,” he writes. “Army officials stated that a physician and a psychiatrist helped design, approve and monitor interrogations at Abu Ghraib.”
[CBS News, 8/20/2004]

Jacob Hornberger. [Source: Institute for Historical Review]Jacob Hornberger, the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, writes that the Pentagon has learned “when the judiciary issues an order, the Pentagon is required to obey it,” which is “why the government is now permitting Ali Saleh al-Marri to meet with his attorney as part of his habeas corpus proceeding in federal district court in South Carolina.” Al-Marri is one of three “enemy combatants” (see June 23, 2003) designated by President Bush. Until recently, the Pentagon had refused to allow al-Marri to contact his lawyers, who have been challenging his detention and enemy combatant status in the US courts, but a recent Supreme Court decision scotched that procedure (see June 28, 2004). Hornberger compares al-Marri’s treatment to that of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whom Iraqi and US officials have restricted from consulting with his own lawyers in Iraq. Al-Marri, before being removed from the US judicial system, “would have been entitled to all the rights and guarantees recognized in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, including being informed of the charges against him, compulsory process of witnesses, cross-examination of adverse witnesses, assistance of counsel, and a jury trial,” Hornberger writes. “If the jury had acquitted him, as juries recently did with defendants in federal terrorism cases brought in Detroit and Boise, he would have walked away from the federal courtroom a free man. By removing al-Marri from the jurisdiction of the federal court on the eve of his trial and placing him into military custody as an ‘enemy combatant,’ the Justice Department and the Pentagon, working together, effectively hijacked our criminal justice system and sabotaged our constitutional order.” [Atlanta Inquirer, 8/21/2004; Future of Freedom Foundation, 2007]

By this date, the Combatant Status Review Tribunal has ruled on the status of 14 Guantanamo detainees. In all 14 cases, the tribunal determines that the Pentagon’s original decision to designate them as unlawful enemy combatants had been justified. Twelve of 31 prisoners reviewed so far have refused to take part in the process. [New York Times, 8/24/2004]

During a pre-trial hearing for Spc. Charles Graner held at a US military tribunal in Mannheim, Germany, Judge Col. James L. Pohl orders the US government to complete three investigative reports about Abu Ghraib by September 10 for submission as evidence. If the government fails to complete the reports by October, he says he will “seriously revisit” Graner’s plea to dismiss the case. Pre-trial hearings are also being held in Mannheim for Spc. Megan Ambuhl, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, and Spc. Javal Davis (see August 24, 2004) in order to establish what evidence can or cannot be submitted to the court-martial [London Times, 8/23/2004]

Javal Davis. [Source: Jana Birchum / Getty Images]During a pre-trial hearing for Sgt. Javal Davis held at a US military tribunal in Mannheim, Germany, Judge Col. James L. Pohl denies a motion by Davis’ attorney to have Rumsfeld testify. Pohl says the defense failed to link the actions of the accused with Rumsfeld’s orders and actions. [CNN, 8/24/2004] Davis will eventually be convicted and sentenced to six months in prison (see May 19, 2004-March 22, 2006).

A hearing is held for Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who is being accused of being a member of al-Qaeda, conspiring to commit acts of terrorism, and destruction of property. The five-member military commission—the first to conduct a trial since World War II—is presided over by Army Col. Peter Brownback, who, according to the Pentagon, has 22 years of experience as a judge advocate and almost 10 as a military judge. [BBC, 6/29/2004; Los Angeles Times, 8/25/2004] Hamdan’s military lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, begins his argument with an attack on Brownback’s qualification to practice law. He calls attention to the fact that Bownback, a retired military judge, is not a current member of the bar in his home state of Virginia. He also alleges that the judge’s office had inappropriate out-of-court discussions with the Office of Military Commissions, and that Brownback had said in a meeting with defense lawyers that a speedy trial was “not an issue here.” Though Brownback denies making the comment, Swift produces a recording of the conversation. But Bownback isn’t the only one put on trial by Swift. He also targets three members of the commission and an alternate member. Swift argues that three have “extensive backgrounds” in dealing with operations in Afghanistan, the treatment of detainees, and military intelligence, and therefore are not in a position to pass an unbiased judgment on the defendant. The alternate member, Lt. Col. Curt S. Cooper, Swift demonstrates, knows little about international law. When asked, “Do you know what the Geneva Convention is, sir?” Cooper replies: “Not specifically. No, Sir. And that’s being honest.” But, he adds, he knows that the Convention consists of three articles. But as Swift points out, that is wrong. “Actually, there are six, Sir,” Swift says, correcting him. Air Force Col. Christopher C. Bogden is the only commission member not challenged by Swift. [Los Angeles Times, 8/25/2004; New York Times, 8/25/2004] In addition to his attacks on the commission members, Swift challenges the merits of the charges against his client. For example he argues that Hamden was denied a speedy trial and that the laws he has been accused of violating were written after the alleged offense.

James Schlesinger. [Source: HBO]The four-member Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations completes its final report on its investigations into the prisoner abuses that are known to have taken place in US-run detention centers throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. The investigative panel, which includes James R. Schlesinger, Harold Brown, Tillie K. Fowler, and Gen. Charles A. Horner, finds that a failure of leadership, leading all the way to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, contributed to the abuse of prisoners. Like the Fay report (see August 25, 2004), to be released the following day, and the February 2004 Taguba report (see March 9, 2004), the Schlesinger report concludes that a lack of oversight and supervision allowed incidents, such as that which occurred at Abu Ghraib, to occur. Unlike preceding investigations, the Schlesinger Panel takes issue with the notion that abuses resulted from the actions of a few bad apples and were not widespread, charging that there is “both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels.” The panel however does not name names. Notwithstanding their criticisms of the secretary, all four members say that Rumsfeld’s mistakes were comparably less significant than those made by uniformed officers. The panel, appointed by the secretary himself, recommends against removing Rumsfeld from office. [New York Times, 8/25/2004] In sum, the panel finds: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his aides failed to anticipate significant militant resistance to the US invasion and did not respond quickly enough to it when its strength became apparent. [New York Times, 8/25/2004] The Department of Defense created confusion when it issued, retracted, and then re-issued its policy on interrogation methods. [New York Times, 8/25/2004] The failure to adequately staff Abu Ghraib contributed to the poor conditions and abuses that took place at the prison. The ratio of military police to prisoners at the facility was 75 to one. [New York Times, 8/25/2004] Responsibility for the abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib go beyond the handful of MPs present in the photographs. “We found a string of failures that go well beyond an isolated cellblock in Iraq,” panelist Tillie K. Fowler explains during a Pentagon press conference. “We found fundamental failures throughout all levels of command, from the soldiers on the ground to the Central Command and to the Pentagon. These failures of leadership helped to set the conditions which allowed for the abusive practice to take place.” [US Department of Defense, 8/24/2004; New York Times, 8/25/2004] Rumsfeld’s decision (see December 2, 2002) on December 2, 2002 to authorize 16 pre-approved additional interrogation procedures for use at the Guantanamo facility; his subsequent decision (see January 15, 2003) to rescind that authority, and the final April 16, 2003 decision (see April 16, 2003) providing a final list of approved techniques was “an element contributing to uncertainties in the field as to which techniques were authorized.” The methods on the list eventually “migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded.” [New York Times, 8/25/2004] The panel seemingly concludes that the interrogation methods approved for use in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo are lawful, fully agreeing that the Third Geneva Convention does not apply to detainees considered enemy combatants. The panel does not question whether the military was justified in classifying the detainees, or “terrorists,” as such. “The Panel accepts the proposition that these terrorists are not combatants entitled to the protections of Geneva Convention III. Furthermore, the Panel accepts the conclusion the Geneva Convention IV and the provisions of domestic criminal law are not sufficiently robust and adequate to provide for the appropriate detention of captured terrorists.” [US Congress, 9/9/2004, pp. 83 ] The panel says that Gen. Ricardo Sanchez’s decision to classify some prisoners in Iraq as enemy combatants was “understandable,” even though Combined Joint Task Force 7 “understood there was no authorization to suspend application of the Geneva Conventions… .” [US Congress, 9/9/2004, pp. 83 ] Abuses at Abu Ghraib involved both MPs and military intelligence personnel. “We now know these abuses occurred at the hands of both military police and military intelligence personnel,” the report says. “The pictured abuses, unacceptable even in wartime, were not part of authorized interrogations nor were they even directed at intelligence targets. They represent deviant behavior and a failure of military leadership and discipline. However, we do know that some of the egregious abuses at Abu Ghraib which were not photographed did occur during interrogation sessions and that abuses during interrogation sessions occurred elsewhere.… We concur with the Jones/Fay investigation’s (see August 25, 2004) conclusion that military intelligence personnel share responsibility for the abuses at Abu Ghraib with the military police soldiers cited in the Taguba investigation.” [New York Times, 8/25/2004] In Guantanamo, roughly one-third of all abuses were interrogation related. [New York Times, 8/25/2004] Contradicting the conclusions of the Red Cross report (see May 7, 2004), the Schlesinger report demonstrates that abuses were widespread. “Abuses of varying severity occurred at differing locations under differing circumstances and context,” the report’s authors write. “They were widespread and, though inflicted on only a small percentage of those detained… .” [New York Times, 8/25/2004] The abusive practices were not sanctioned by the military’s interrogation policy. “No approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities.” [New York Times, 8/25/2004] The panelists believe the abuses occurring during the night shift in Cell Block 1 of Abu Ghraib “would have been avoided with proper training, leadership and oversight.” [New York Times, 8/25/2004] Critics will say the report is a “whitewash,” noting that the panel cannot be considered independent given that it was appointed by Rumsfeld himself. Months before the panel completed its work, panelist Tillie Fowler said Rumsfeld should not be blamed for the abuses. “The secretary is an honest, decent, honorable man, who’d never condone this type of activity,” she said referring to the abuse at Abu Ghraib. “This was not a tone set by the secretary.” [New York Times, 6/6/2004]

George Fay. [Source: US Army]Generals George Fay and Anthony R. Jones release a final report describing the findings of their combined investigation of the abuses committed by US soldiers against detainees being held at Abu Ghraib. The investigation was initially ordered by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, commander of CJTF-7, who charged Fay with determining whether the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade “requested, encouraged, condoned, or solicited Military Police (MP) personnel to abuse detainees and whether MI [military intelligence] personnel comported with established interrogation procedures and applicable laws and regulations.” Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones joined the investigation in June and was instructed to determine if “organizations or personnel higher” than the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade chain of command were involved in the Abu Ghraib abuses. [US Department of the Army, 3/9/2004] The report provides detailed descriptions of 44 separate incidents of abuse perpetrated by US soldiers against Abu Ghraib detainees beginning in September 2003. The abuses described include acts of sodomy, beatings, nudity, lengthy isolation, and the use of unmuzzled dogs aimed at making detainees urinate and defecate in fear. “The abuses spanned from direct physical assault, such as delivering head blows rendering detainees unconscious, to sexual posing and forced participation in group masturbation,” the authors say in the report. “At the extremes were the death of a detainee… an alleged rape committed by a US translator and observed by a female soldier, and the alleged sexual assault of an unknown female.” [Washington Post, 8/26/2005] Parts of the report are classified because, according to Army officials, they include references to secret policy memos. But when these classified sections are leaked to the New York Times by a senior Pentagon official, they do not appear to contain any sensitive material about interrogation methods or details of official memos. Instead, the secret passages demonstrate how interrogation practices from Afghanistan and Guantanamo were introduced to Abu Ghraib and how Sanchez played a major part in that process. [New York Times, 8/27/2004] Though the report lays most of the blame on MPs and a small group of military intelligence, civilian, and CIA interrogators, it does recommend disciplinary action for Col. Thomas M. Pappas and Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan. “The primary causes are misconduct (ranging from inhumane to sadistic) by a small group of morally corrupt soldiers and civilians, a lack of discipline on the part of the leaders and soldiers of the 205 MI BDE [Military Intelligence Brigade] and a failure or lack of leadership by multiple echelons within CJTF-7.” Lt. Gen. Sanchez, the commander of Combined Joined Task Force (CJTF) 7, though mildly criticized, is still praised in the report as having performed “above expectations.” [US Department of the Army, 3/9/2004; Washington Post, 8/26/2005] Jones portrays the abuse as being only coincidentally linked to interrogations. “Most, though not all, of the violent or sexual abuses occurred separately from scheduled interrogations and did not focus on persons held for intelligence purposes.” Gen. Fay on the other hand writes that the majority of the victims of abuse were military intelligence holds, and thus held for intelligence purposes. In addition, he concludes that “confusion and misunderstanding between MPs and MI [military intelligence]” also contributed to acts of abuse. Military intelligence personnel ordered MPs to implement the tactic of “sleep adjustment.”
“The MPs used their own judgment as to how to keep them awake. Those techniques included taking the detainees out of their cells, stripping them, and giving them cold showers. Cpt. [Carolyn A.] Wood stated she did not know this was going on and thought the detainees were being kept awake by the MPs banging on the cell doors, yelling, and playing loud music.” [US Department of Defense, 8/23/2004 ]Conclusions - Nearly 50 people were involved in the 44 incidents of abuse listed in the report: 27 military intelligence soldiers, 10 military police officers, four civilian contractors, and a number of other intelligence and medical personnel who failed to report the abuse. [Washington Post, 8/26/2005; Washington Post, 8/26/2005] Military intelligence soldiers were found to have requested or encouraged 16 of the 44 incidents. [Washington Post, 8/26/2005; Washington Post, 8/26/2005] The incidents of abuse included torture. “Torture sometimes is used to define something in order to get information,” Fay tells reporters. “There were very few instances where in fact you could say that was torture. It’s a harsh word, and in some instances, unfortunately, I think it was appropriate here. There were a few instances when torture was being used.” [Washington Post, 8/26/2005] Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez and his staff “contributed indirectly to the questionable activities regarding alleged detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib” and failed “to ensure proper staff oversight of detention and interrogation operations.” [US Department of the Army, 3/9/2004; Washington Post, 8/26/2005] For example, Sanchez endorsed the use of stress positions, nudity, and military working dogs (see October 12, 2003), even though they had not been approved by Rumsfeld. [Washington Post, 8/26/2005] In spite of this, the executive summary of the report asserts that “the CJTF-7 Commander and staff performed above expectations… .” [US Department of the Army, 3/9/2004; Washington Post, 8/26/2005] Senior officers in Iraq failed to provide “clear, consistent guidance” for handling detainees. [US Department of the Army, 3/9/2004; Washington Post, 8/26/2005] There is no evidence that policy or instructions provided by senior US authorities sanctioned the types of abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib. [Washington Post, 8/26/2005; Washington Post, 8/26/2005] CIA officials in the prison hid “ghost detainees” from human rights groups in violation of international law. [Washington Post, 8/26/2005]

At Fort Bragg, defense attorneys for Pfc. Lynndie England rely upon the two Pentagon reports (see August 24, 2004)
(see August 25, 2004) released the previous week to argue that their client and other low-ranking MPs were following approved military intelligence procedures. The hearing is being held to investigate the nineteen charges against England and to determine whether she should face a court-martial. Thirteen of her charges relate to the abuse of detainees, while the others concern possession of sexually explicit photos. If convicted, England faces up to thirty-eight years in prison. [Associated Press, 8/30/2004]

Britain’s prominent Chatham House think tank warns of a further deterioration of the security situation in Iraq, predicting that the “legacy of the revelations of prisoner abuse will not fade easily and it will not be enough for US and British forces simply to say that they are dealing with this issue internally.” The think tank says that if Iraqis are not afforded a means to seek redress, “the impulse to settle accounts through violence will remain.” [Chatham House, 9/2004 ]

British terror suspect Binyam Mohamed (see May-September, 2001) is flown from Afghanistan (see January-September 2004) to Guantanamo. In Morocco, Mohamed confessed to a wide array of crimes to avoid torture (see July 21, 2002 -- January 2004); as he recalls, after being charged with crimes (see November 4, 2005), his captors now want him to alter his story. He will later say: “They said they were worried I would tell the court that I had only confessed through torture. They said now they needed me to say it freely. We called them the clean team, they wanted to say they had got this stuff from a clean interrogation.” He will recall one instance where he refuses to give his fingerprints; in return, he is beaten by the so-called “Emergency Reaction Force,” a much-feared assault team: “They nearly broke my back. The guy on top was twisting me one way, the guys on my legs the other. They marched me out of the cell to the fingerprint room, still cuffed. I clenched my fists behind me so they couldn’t take prints, so they tried to take them by force. The guy at my head sticks his fingers up my nose and wrenches my head back, jerking it around by the nostrils. Then he put his fingers in my eyes. It felt as if he was trying to gouge them out. Another guy was punching my ribs and another was squeezing my testicles. Finally I couldn’t take it any more. I let them take the prints.” [Daily Mail, 3/8/2009] In October 2008, all charges against Mohamed will be dropped (see October-December 2008). In late February 2009, Mohamed will be released (see February 22-24, 2009).

A Los Angeles Times editorial says the recent hearings before a military commission in Guantanamo (see July 30, 2004)
(see August 2004)
(see August 24, 2004) are “slapdash preliminary hearings,” which “violated basic tenets of fairness.” They resembled “something between a Mel Brooks farce and the kangaroo courts of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin,” the paper says. [Los Angeles Times, 9/2/2004]

Human Rights Watch says trials being held in Guantanamo before military commissions are “fundamentally flawed” and “fall far short of international due process standards.” [Human Rights Watch, 1/9/2004]

By this date, Combatant Status Review Tribunals have been held for 55 Guantanamo detainees. The review process has been completed for 30 of them, only one of whom—an unidentified man held prisoner at Guantanamo since May 2002—has been determined not to be an enemy combatant. He will be released without compensation. [Boston Globe, 9/9/2004] The Pentagon will refuse to provide any details about the detainee or his case—who he is or why he was determined not to be an enemy combatant. [Los Angeles Times, 11/7/2004]

During the presentation and discussion of the Schlesinger report (see August 24, 2004) before the House Armed Services Committee, most Republicans, including its chairman, Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA), say the investigation shows that only a handful of US soldiers were responsible for the abuses. Democrats however, like Representative Ike Skelton (D-MO), disagree. “We must not continue to call this the work of just a few bad apples,” Skelton says. [New York Times, 9/10/2004]

A marine who was a prison guard at Guantanamo in 2003 tells Seymour Hersh, anonymously, that he and his colleagues were encouraged by their squad leaders to “give the prisoners a visit” once or twice a month. This means they could rough them up. “We tried to [expletive] with them as much as we could—inflict a little bit of pain,” he says. But the fear of exposure held them back. “We couldn’t do much. There were always news people there,” he says. “That’s why you couldn’t send them back with a broken leg or so. And if somebody died, I’d get court-martialed.” The mistreatment was often administered ad hoc. The marine says: “A squad leader would say, ‘Let’s go—all the cameras are on lunch break.’” He also recalls hooding prisoners and then driving “them around the camp in a Humvee, making turns so they didn’t know where they were.… I wasn’t trying to get information. I was just having a little fun—playing mind control.” A senior FBI official tells Hersh that FBI agents at Guantanamo have described similar activities. [Guardian, 9/13/2004]

Alvin Hellerstein. [Source: Associated Press]In 2003, after reports began to surface that some detainees in US custody had been abused, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records about the treatment of all detainees caught since 9/11 and held in US custody overseas. The ACLU eventually filed a lawsuit to get the records, and on September 15, 2004, judge Alvin Hellerstein orders the CIA and other government agencies to “produce or identify” all relevant documents by October 15, 2004. [FindLaw, 12/14/2007] Hellerstein also rules that classified documents must be identified in a written log and the log must be submitted to him for review. In December 2004, the CIA and other agencies make public a huge amount of information but fail to inform the judge about the videotapes and other classified information (see December 21, 2004). Since that time, the case remains delayed with stays, extensions, and appeals. In December 2005, the CIA will destroy videotapes of the interrogations of at least two high-ranking al-Qaeda detainees (see November 2005). After the destruction of the videotapes is publicly revealed in December 2007, the New York Times will comment on the ACLU case, “Some legal experts [say] that the CIA would have great difficulty defending what seemed to be a decision not to identify the tapes to the judge, and the subsequent decision to destroy the tapes.” [New York Times, 12/13/2007] Legal analyst John Dean will later comment, “It is difficult to see why the CIA is, in fact, not in contempt, given the nature of the [ACLU] request and the judge’s order.” He will suggest that the case may represent the best chance to find out why and how the CIA destroyed the videotapes. [FindLaw, 12/14/2007]

Jonathan Idema (far right) and his colleagues interrogating an Afghan. [Source: Columbia Journalism Review]Four Afghans and three Americans, Jonathan Idema, Brent Bennett, and Edward Caraballo, are convicted of running a private jail in Kabul and torturing Afghans. The Afghans are sentenced to between one and five years in prison; Idema and Bennett to 10 years; and Caraballo to eight years. They were arrested in Kabul in July on charges of kidnapping, torture, and illegal entry into Afghanistan. The US government calls Idema a bounty hunter, and the Pentagon denies any ties with the Americans. But Idema says his work was approved by Afghan and US authorities. He also tells the court the FBI is setting him up. During the trial, however, Idema fails to prove that his actions were authorized by the US authorities. An unnamed US agency gave him a passport, he alleges, and a visa similar to those furnished to US Special Forces. He also claims, “while we were not in the United States army, we were working for the United States army.” He says he had hundreds of videos, photos, and documents that could prove his claims—but they were confiscated by the FBI following his arrest. In their defense, lawyer Robert Fogelnest shows a video of the Americans suggesting they have received an official welcome in Afghanistan. In the footage, they are officially greeted by Afghan officials upon arrival in Afghanistan. One of the officials present was the Kabul police chief. [BBC, 9/15/2004]

An unnamed secret CIA prison in Kabul. [Source: Trevor Paglen]The New York Times reports the existence of a secret CIA detention facility housed in a hotel in the center of Kabul called the “Ariana.” It is off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the number of detainees held there is unknown. A former Taliban commander, Mullah Rocketi, was reportedly detained there for eight months. He says conditions were reasonably comfortable and he was not mistreated. He was released in 2003 after making an undisclosed deal with his captors. Another Taliban leader detained at the Ariana since January 2004 is Jan Baz Khan, according to an anonymous US military commander. [New York Times, 9/17/2004]

The Pentagon announces the transfer of 35 prisoners from Guantanamo to Pakistan, 29 of whom will remain in detention under the control of the Pakistani government. The remaining six will be released. The total number of detainees at Guantanamo is now “approximately 550.”
[US Department of Defense, 9/18/2004]

Fourteen prisoners are transferred from Afghanistan to Guantanamo. They include Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman, a Yemeni security official who had foreknowledge of 9/11 and was seized in Egypt (see August 12, 2000 and September 2002), and Saifulla Paracha, a Pakistani citizen who was arrested and sent to Bagram in July 2003 (see July 2003). All the other twelve detainees had previously been transported to Afghanistan as a part of the CIA’s rendition program. [Knight Ridder, 1/11/2005; Grey, 2007, pp. 257]

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) opens a probe into the deaths of two Afghan detainees, allegedly at the hands of US Special Forces soldiers. The two men, Wakil Mohammed and Jamal Naseer, died on March 1, 2003 and March 16, 2003, respectively (see March 1, 2003 and March 16, 2003). Mohammed, an unarmed peasant, was being interrogated about his role in a recent firefight. While he was protesting his innocence, he was shot in the face by an American soldier. Naseer, taken into custody with seven other Afghans for interrogation about their supposed involvement with local Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters, died about a week after his capture, allegedly from repeated torture and abuse. Los Angeles Times reporters Craig Pyes and Mark Mazzetti write, “Motivation for those arrests remains cloaked in Afghan political intrigue. The action was requested by a provincial governor feuding with local military commanders, an Afghan intelligence report says.” While the Army apparently looked into the circumstances of the deaths shortly after they occurred, no official investigation was ever mounted until the Crimes of War Project began its own investigation into the deaths. When the organization released its findings to two Los Angeles Times reporters, Kevin Sack and Craig Pyes, and the reporters filed a series of articles on the deaths in September 2004, the CID opened its own probe. Former Attorney General for the Armed Forces Yar Mohammed Tamkin, who directs the Afghan investigation into the death of Naseer, concludes in his own report that there was a “strong possibility” that Naseer was “murdered as the result of torture” at the hands of his US captors. Under Afghan law, he writes, “it is necessary for our legal system to investigate the torture of the seven individuals and the murder of Jamal, son of Ghazi, and other similar acts committed by foreign nationals.” CID investigators say that the Army’s original inquiry into the deaths was stymied by a lack of information made available by the Gardez unit’s commanders. “We’re trying to figure out who was running the base,” says Army detective Christopher Coffey. “We don’t know what unit was there. There are no records. The reporting system is broke across the board. Units are transferred in and out. There are no SOPs [standard operating procedures]… and each unit acts differently.” Coffey does acknowledge that “Gardez is the worst facility—it is three or four times as bad as any other base in Afghanistan.” Naseer’s death was officially attributed to “natural causes” stemming from an apparent sexually-contracted urinary tract infection, and his death was never reported, as is standard Army procedure. Shortly after Naseer’s death, the other seven detainees were transferred to the custody of local Afghan police, who mounted their own investigation. The seven were released without charge six weeks later. [Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2004] Two special Forces soldiers accused of complicity in Naseer and Mohammed’s deaths will be given administrative reprimands by the Army in 2007 (see January 26, 2007).

Porter Goss. [Source: CIA]Porter Goss becomes the new CIA director, replacing George Tenet (John McLaughlin served as interim director for a few months after Tenet’s sudden resignation—see June 3, 2004). Goss was a CIA field agent, then a Republican representative and co-chair of the 2002 9/11 Congressional Inquiry. [Knight Ridder, 10/25/2004]Ignored Pakistan, ISI during 9/11 Investigations - He took part in secret meetings with Pakistani ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed before 9/11 and on the morning of 9/11 itself (see August 28-30, 2001 and (8:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Despite some press reports that Mahmood directly ordered money to be sent to hijacker Mohamed Atta, there is virtually no mention of Mahmood or Pakistan in the Inquiry report that Goss co-chaired. Such issues appear to be forgotten by the US press, but the Times of India raised them when his nomination was announced. [Times of India, 8/10/2004]Will Lead 'Purge' - During his confirmation hearings Goss pledges that he will be a nonpartisan CIA director, but he will purge the CIA of all but “true believers” in Bush’s policies shortly after becoming director (see November-December 2004). [Knight Ridder, 10/25/2004] CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson will later write that Goss “arrive[s] at headquarters with the clear intention to houseclean, and from the beginning [is] seen more as a crusader and occupier than former colleague. He [brings] with him several loyal Hill staffers, known for their abrasive management style, and immediately set[s] to work attempting to bring the CIA—with special emphasis on the often wild and willful operations directorate—to heel, per White House orders. White House officials had suspected that CIA officials had leaked information prior to the election about the intelligence surrounding the war in Iraq that put the agency in a better light. Thus, Goss’s orders from the administration [are] probably along the lines of ‘get control of it.’” She will write that while most at the CIA welcome the idea of reform as a means to rebuild the agency’s credibility, “Goss’s heavy-handedness [will be] bitterly resented.” Goss will fail to have any meaningful dealings with “senior agency managers,” will spend “little time with the heads of foreign intelligence services (all of whom the CIA relied on for cooperation with counterterrorism and counterproliferation matters),” will fail to sufficiently engage “in day-to-day activities,” and will fail to gain a grasp of “some of the details of operations.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 211-212]

Side profiles of Habibullah (left) and Dilawar (right). [Source: CBS]More than one-and-a-half years after the deaths of the Afghan detainees Mullah Habibullah (see November 30-December 3, 2002) and Dilawar (see December 10, 2002), the US Army Criminal Investigation Command completes its investigation of the two cases. It finds that 28 military personnel, including two captains, were involved in the incident. The perpetrators could be charged with involuntary manslaughter, assault, and conspiracy. A Pentagon official says five or six of the soldiers will likely be charged with the most serious offenses. The investigation concludes that “multiple soldiers” beat Dilawar and Habibullah, using mostly their knees. It is likely, according to Pentagon officials, that the beatings were concentrated on the legs of the detainees, so that wounds would be less visible. Amnesty International severely criticizes the long duration of the investigation. “The failure to promptly account for the prisoners’ deaths indicates a chilling disregard for the value of human life and may have laid the groundwork for further abuses in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere,” says Jumana Musa of Amnesty International USA. [New York Times, 10/15/2004]

The FBI prepares a detailed 300-page report in response to follow-up questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee about Director Mueller’s earlier testimony on May 20, 2004 (see May 20, 2004) regarding incidents of abuse known by the FBI. However the Justice Department refuses to release the report saying that it must first review it. [Newsweek, 1/6/2005]

Lt. Col. Anthony Christino III, a 20-year military intelligence veteran who spent six months in 2003 working as “senior watch officer” with a Joint Intelligence Task Force, says that material he reviewed from Guantanamo indicated that the administration had “wildly exaggerated” the intelligence value of the Guantanamo detainees. The process of screening captives at Bagram for detention at Guantanamo was “hopelessly flawed from the get-go,” he says. The personnel that conducted the screening were “far too poorly trained to identify real terrorists from the ordinary Taliban militia.” Most of the Guantanamo detainees had no connection to al-Qaeda, Christino said, adding that Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller’s system would have only produced false confessions. [Observer, 10/3/2004] He also says it is doubtful that Guantanamo prisoners possessed any important intelligence concerning al-Qaeda. Anyone claiming to have such information probably fabricated it in response to the awards and punishment policy instituted by General Miller. Christino’s account is supported by an FBI official whose job it is to track suspected terrorists. The official tells the Guardian, “I’m unaware of any important information in my field that’s come from Gitmo. It’s clearly not a significant source.”
[Guardian, 10/3/2004]

Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, releases a statement condemning the allegations of the abuse and torture of Iraqi and Afghan detainees; the statement coincides with a letter Leahy sends to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [Pyes, 9/20/2004] In the statement, Leahy says that committee chairman Sen. John Warner’s efforts to investigate the scandals "remain… hampered by the leadership of his own party and an Administration that does not want the full truth revealed.… Despite calls from a small handful of us who want to find the truth, Congress and this Administration have failed to seriously investigate acts that bring dishonor upon our great Nation and endanger our soldiers overseas.… The Bush Administration circled the wagons long ago and has continually maintained that the abuses were the work of ‘a few bad apples.’ I have long said that somewhere in the upper reaches of the executive branch a process was set in motion that rolled forward until it produced this scandal. Even without a truly independent investigation, we now know that the responsibility for abuse runs high up into the chain of command." He accuses the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Senate as a whole, of falling “short in its oversight responsibilities.” He calls for a truly independent investigation into the torture allegations, along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. He also calls for the US to once again begin following the guidelines of the Geneva Conventions. [US Senate, 10/1/2004] Sen. Warner’s office will later admit that Warner was pressured by unnamed Bush administration officials to “back off” investigating the Abu Ghraib abuses (see May 2004).

The Supreme Court declines without comment to hear an appeal by “enemy combatant” Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri (see December 12, 2001 and June 23, 2003). Al-Marri has filed a civil suit, Al-Marri v. Rumsfeld, challenging his detention and his status as an enemy combatant. Previously, courts ruled that al-Marri’s lawyers should have filed the suit in South Carolina, where al-Marri is being held in a Charleston naval brig, not in Illinois, where al-Marri was attending college. The Supreme Court refused to overturn that decision. Al-Marri’s lawyers intend to refile the suit in South Carolina (see August 8, 2005). [Al-Marri v. Rumsfeld, 6/2004; Associated Press, 10/4/2004; Slate, 4/20/2006]

Four US soldiers are charged with murdering an Iraqi major general in their custody. Almost a year ago, Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush died during an interrogation at a base near Qaim, in western Iraq. Mowhoush was smothered to death (see November 26, 2003). The four soldiers are Chief Warrant Officers Jefferson L. Williams and Lewis E. Welshofer, Jr., Sergeant First Class William J. Sommer, and Specialist Jerry L. Loper. All are charged with murder and dereliction of duty. Williams, Welshofer, and Sommer were members of the 66th Military Company, a unit of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Loper was a member of the regiment’s Support Squadron, and assigned to helicopter maintenance. Only Welshofer has training in interrogation practices. Mowhoush, allegedly a high-ranking member of the anti-American insurgency, surrendered to US forces two weeks before his death. The Pentagon initially reported his death as due to “natural causes,” but now admits Mowhoush was tortured to death. “General Mowhoush was allegedly placed in a sleeping bag and then bound to prevent his movement,” a Pentagon report says. “One of the warrant officers [Welshofer] reportedly sat on his chest and continued the interrogation. General Mowhoush was then rolled over, and the warrant officer sat on his back.” Mowhoush died in that position. A medical examination proved that he had died of asphyxiation. Other documents later show that Mowhoush had a bag pulled over his head, the bag was wrapped tightly with electrical cords, and he was beaten and kicked by a crowd of interrogators and officials (see January 19, 2006). Regiment commander Colonel David Teeples says of the charges, “There is no evidence, there is no proof.” Much of the evidence presented in the case is classified and may not ever be made public. “If there are witnesses or documents that would disclose classified information, the trial is closed for those portions,” says retired Air Force Colonel Skip Morgan, a former military judge. [Colorado Springs Gazette, 10/5/2004] The murder charge against Sommer will later be dropped. Williams and Loper will make plea agreements in return for their testimony against Welshofer. [Rocky Mountain News, 1/17/2006] Welshofer will be convicted, but will not serve jail time or even be discharged from the Army (see January 24, 2006).

Six US soldiers are charged with manslaughter in the killing of Iraqi prisoners. Two soldiers, First Lieutenant Jack Saville and Sergeant First Class Tracy Perkins, are charged with forcing an Iraqi man, Zaidoun Fadel Hassoun, and Hassoun’s cousin to leap from a bridge into the Tigris River near Samarra. Hassoun drowned. Another prisoner death is also being investigated (see January 9, 2004), and may result in further charges against the six. [Colorado Springs Gazette, 10/5/2004]

British Guantanamo prisoner Feroz Abbasi argues during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing that he should be granted POW status in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. One of the three Tribunal members, an Air Force colonel, replies: “Mr. Abbasi, your conduct is unacceptable…. I don’t care about international law. I don’t want to hear the words ‘international law’ again.” [Sunday Times (London), 11/21/2004]

Accused terrorist Yaser Esam Hamdi returns to Saudi Arabia aboard a US military jet. Earlier in 2004, the US Supreme Court ruled that the US government could not continue to hold Hamdi, a US citizen, as an enemy combatant without allowing him to challenge that status (see June 28, 2004). The US government was still free to bring charges against him but instead chose to negotiate with his attorneys about a release. In exchange for his release, Hamdi agrees to renounce his US citizenship and pledge never to travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Syria, the Palestinian West Bank, or Gaza. He must also report any intent to travel outside Saudi Arabia. [CNN, 10/14/2004]'Shocking Admission' of Lack of Criminal Case against Hamdi - Andrew Cohen comments in the Los Angeles Times, “If Hamdi is such a minor threat today that he can go back to the Middle East without a trial or any other proceeding, it’s hard not to wonder whether the government has been crying wolf all these years.” He calls the release “a shocking admission from the government that there is not now, and probably never has been, a viable criminal case against Hamdi.” [Los Angeles Times, 8/16/2004]Hamdi Case Used to Set Favorable Precedent? - Author and reporter Charlie Savage will agree with Cohen. “Hamdi’s release meant that a prisoner who the White House had once sworn was too dangerous to be allowed access to a lawyer was now going free—just like hundreds of prisoners from Guantanamo who were held without trial for years and then quietly released,” Savage will write. He will note that many administration critics believe Hamdi’s case had been used as a tool by the administration to get a favorable judicial precedent and, once that precedent had been put in place, the administration had no more use for Hamdi and threw him out of the country rather than actually continue with a problematic trial or legal proceeding. [Savage, 2007, pp. 199-200]

A group of more than 650 Western foreign affairs specialists, calling themselves “Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy,” write an “Open Letter to the American People,” which says: “American actions in Iraq, including but not limited to the scandal of Abu Ghraib, have harmed the reputation of the US in most parts of the Middle East and, according to polls, made Osama bin Laden more popular in some countries than is President Bush. This increased popularity makes it easier for al-Qaeda to raise money, attract recruits, and carry out its terrorist operations than would otherwise be the case.”
[Anti-war (.com), 10/12/2004]

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports that at least 11 men are being held in incommunicado in a Jordanian detention center on behalf of the US. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Hambali are presumed to be among those detained (see June 11, 2004). [Reuters, 10/13/2004]

The CIA says in a court filing that it cannot confirm or deny the existence of documents being sought after by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “because to do so would tend to reveal classified information and intelligence sources and methods that are protected from disclosure.” The ACLU sued the government for access to the documents two months earlier. The documents, which a US District Court ordered the government to provide (see August 12, 2004), relate to the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo and Afghanistan. [Boston Globe, 12/27/2004]

Noor Uthman Muhammed, a detainee being held at Guantanamo, disputes many of the allegations made against him at a combatant status review tribunal hearing to determine if he is an enemy combatant. Muhammed admits receiving and giving military training at Khalden Camp in Afghanistan, buying food for the camp, and being captured with training camp facilitator Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002). However, he contests many of the charges, and he denies: Handling one of the weapons he is accused of using, the Zukair anti-aircraft weapon, which he says he has never heard of; Procuring a fax machine for Osama bin Laden. He did attempt to buy a piece of similar equipment, but the deal did not go through and the equipment was for himself, not bin Laden, who he has never met; Being assisted in his escape from Afghanistan by a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant. When he asks for the lieutenant’s name, the military officials are unable to provide it; Having a Somali passport; Being associated with al-Qaeda. He comments: “I have no knowledge of al-Qaeda, and I don’t know anybody from there. But if you want to say that I’m Muslim and want to make-believe I belong to al-Qaeda, then that is something different”; Being associated with the Taliban. He comments: “I don’t know anything about the Taliban. I never carried arms with them.” [US Department of Defense, 2004 ]

Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad al-Odah. [Source: Cageprisoners]US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rules on a lawsuit filed by three Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo: Mohammed Ahmed al-Kandari, Khalid Abdullah Mishal al-Mutairi, and Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad al-Odah. She rules that detainees should be permitted to communicate with their lawyers without the government listening in on their conversations. She says the government’s attempt to wire-tap detainee-attorney communications threatens to “erode [the] bedrock principle” of attorney-client privilege. She says the government is defending its position with “a flimsy assemblage” of arguments. “The government has supplied only the most slender legal support for its argument, which cannot withstand the weight of the authority surrounding the importance of the attorney-client privilege.” [Reuters, 10/20/2004] The three Kuwaitis, Judge Kollar states, “have been detained virtually incommunicado for nearly three years without being charged with any crime. To say that their ability to investigate the circumstances surrounding their capture and detention is ‘seriously impaired’ is an understatement.” [Associated Press, 10/21/2004] She does concede, however, that lawyers for the Guantanamo detainees are required to disclose to the government any information from their client involving future threats to national security. [Reuters, 10/20/2004]

Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick tells Judge Col. James L. Pohl during his court-martial that he never thought of reporting the abuse he witnessed at Abu Ghraib. “I didn’t think anyone cared about what happened to detainees as long as they didn’t die,” he says. In addition, he feared his comrades’ reaction. “I was afraid of retaliation by other soldiers. We all walked around with loaded weapons. It was very high stress.”
[Los Angeles Times, 10/21/2004]

Following criticism over their impartiality (see August 24, 2004), retired Army Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg Jr. removes three members from the six-member military commission that is trying enemy combatants at the Guantanamo base in Cuba. [Independent, 10/23/2004] Altenburg heads the Appointing Authority for the Office of Military Commissions, which selects members of the military commissions. [Los Angeles Times, 8/25/2004] Army Col. Peter Brownback retains his job. Brownback’s eligibility to preside over the Guantanamo hearings had earlier been challenged by Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the attorney for detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan. Critics suggest his close personal relationship with Altenburg is a factor. Brownback was a close colleague of Altenburg at Fort Bragg. He attended the wedding of Altenburg’s son, and his wife worked in Altenburg’s office. Swift criticizes the decision not to remove Brownback and says the standards “make no sense.”
[Independent, 10/23/2004]

Theo van Boven, the UN director of reports on torture, expresses “serious concern” over “allegations of attempts to circumvent the absolute nature of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill treatment in the name of countering terrorism, particularly in relation to the interrogation and conditions of detention of prisoners.” Although he does not mention the US by name, his remarks are evidently aimed at the Bush administration. “The absolute nature of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill treatment means that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture,” van Boven stresses. “No executive, legislative, administrative, or judicial measure authorizing recourse to torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment can be considered as lawful under international law.”
[New York Times, 10/28/2004]

The Army completes a classified report on detainee abuse at Camp Nama, a Special Forces detention center at Baghdad International Airport. The report is based on an investigation led by Brigadier General Richard Formica into three specific allegations against the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Arabian Peninsula, which operates throughout Iraq. Formica’s report concludes that detainees who report being sodomized or beaten are seeking sympathy and better treatment, and thus are not credible. The report cites an Army medical report which had initially noted that a complaining detainee’s wounds were “consistent with the history [of abuse] he provided.… The doctor did find scars on his wrists and noted what he believed to be an anal fissure.” Two days later, Formica had the detainee re-examined by another doctor, who found “no fissure, and no scarring.” Formica concludes, “As a result, I did not find medical evidence of the sodomy.” In the case of a detainee who died in custody, Formica reports that the detainee suffered bruising to the “shoulders, chest, hip, and knees” but adds, “It is not unusual for detainees to have minor bruising, cuts, and scrapes.” A July 2006 report by Human Rights Watch will find evidence of “serious mistreatment” of detainees based on witness accounts of Special Forces interrogators and other US personnel. Formica will note in an e-mail: “I conducted a thorough investigation… and stand by my report.… [S]everal issues” he discovered “were corrected,” he will say. [Armed Forces Press Service, 6/17/2006; New Yorker, 6/17/2007]

In his November 2004 report, “Torture, and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,” UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights (director of reports on torture), Theo van Boven, states, “A legal argument of necessity and self-defense, invoking domestic law, have recently been put forward, aimed at providing a justification to exempt officials suspected of having committed or instigated acts of torture against suspected terrorists from criminal liability.” Van Boven adds, “The condoning of torture is, per se, a violation of the prohibition of torture.”
[Inter Press Service, 11/11/2004]

Former US Army officer Phillip Carter points out that the Abu Ghraib scandal will make the battlefield more dangerous. “Those tens of thousands of Iraqis who surrendered during the two Gulf Wars did so because they believed they would be treated better as prisoners by the United States than as soldiers by the Hussein government. But in the wake of Abu Ghraib, more future battles fought by America will have to be fought to the death.”
[Washington Monthly, 11/2004]

Pentagon spokeswoman Navy Cpt. Beci Brenton says defends the Combatant Status Review Tribunals being held at Guantanamo are fair. “We think this is a professional process, she says. It’s very rigorous. It’s fair. We take extra steps to make sure the detainees understand the process, and they are given a good opportunity to speak for themselves.”
[Los Angeles Times, 11/7/2004]

Eugene R. Fidell, president of the Washington-based National Institute of Military Justice, says the US is skirting its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. “These are not a meaningful substitute for the competent tribunals required under the Geneva Conventions,” he says. The tribunals, he argues, should have been held in Afghanistan and Pakistan just after the detainees were captured, when evidence and witnesses were still easily obtainable. Commenting on the 104 cases so far reviewed by the tribunal—only one of which resulted in a detainee being released—Fidell sneers: “That’s a great battling average, isn’t it? They’re pitching a nearly perfect game.”
[Los Angeles Times, 11/7/2004]

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